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Have you heard of a Japanese company called Nissho Electronics? Your author hasn’t either, and he has spent the best part of the decade following Japanese technology news from Japan – so don’t feel too bad.

Nissho has just announced a 52-inch Full HD, glasses-free 3D television that’s ready to roll out to anyone who doesn’t balk at the ¥1.7 million ($20,820) price tag. What do you get for all that money? A 52-inch LCD panel that can display 3D video in Full HD (1080p). The television uses a lenticular display to achieve the 3D illusion. Nisho calls the system 2D + Depth.” What’s really clever is that it can convert regular 2D images to 3D.

So how did an obscure electronics company get the jump on the likes of Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba? It seems it had some help from another obscure electronics company called Dimenco, which was created by four former Philips employees. Philips and Dimenco, you see, had been quietly experimenting with glasses-free 3D technology for some time.

Obviously the prohibitively expensive asking price will prevent regular consumers from enjoying the fruits of Dimenco’s research… for now at least. But if the demand is out there, in a couple of years we should start seeing some relatively affordable consumer models.